


Spark

by haintblue



Series: all realms of where and when beyond [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 3 a.m., BAMF!Stiles, Bathrooms, Crossover, Drabble, F/F, Gen, M/M, Stiles is Magic, season four btvs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-11 16:36:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2075253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haintblue/pseuds/haintblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s 3 a.m. on a random Thursday when Stiles meets the witch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

After spending years in Beacon Hills running for his life, the beginning of Stiles' freshman year at UC Sunnydale is a breeze. Sure, there are some downsides, like having stoned people of all sexes blearily barging into his shower stall at 6 a.m. and being unable to sleep because of the awful dubstep shaking the building from nearby frat parties. There are also the not-quite-as-normal things, like the creepy floating corpses who come to cut out people's hearts in October; the bizarre first kegger of the year where everyone gets super hairy; and the strangely large, passionate concentration of people in the ROTC.

For the most part, though, it’s just college, with late-night studying sessions and too much caffeine and some social stumbling as he figures out how to adjust to most of the pack being at UCLA (or in Beacon Hills, the domain of one surly and surprisingly romantic alpha werewolf). Stiles is enjoying a relatively normal semester primarily as a student, helping out the pack with both magickal and collegiate issues as they arise and missing the hell out of Derek. 

It’s 3 a.m. on a random Thursday in November when Stiles meets the witch.

He's trying to be quiet, bare feet on the ancient, dirty carpet in the UC Sunnydale dorm hallways, a rucksack at his side full of things he'd rather not have to explain to any stoned students or bored RAs, headed to the bathroom.

His phone buzzes as he starts to ease the door open, so for a moment, he doesn't realize what’s right in front of him, thumbing the buzzer into silence. He looks up sharply at the sound of a very tentative, “Ah…”

A woman is sitting on the white tile, surrounded by red candles whose flames are doing a very good job of getting halfway to the ceiling.

Stiles blinks, one hand on his backpack full of candles and crystals, the other prepared to slam the door shut and reach into his pockets for the channeling crystal he keeps in case of supernatural emergencies. Which, he is happy to report, have not been quite as frequent at UC Sunnydale as he had been led to believe, what with it being a Hellmouth and all. Turns out that spending your teenage years with an active Nemeton was great for college prep.

The witch, however, doesn't start to chant, or grab a weapon. She doesn't even rise from her crosslegged position, although the flames are now flickering at a normal level. She's cute, with short, curly ginger hair and frankly adorable red plaid pajamas.

It's the plaid that eases Stiles out of his defensive crouch. Well, that and the sweet, hesitant smile that tugs at her mouth.

"Hi there," she says, eyes wide. "Um... could you shut the door, please? You can come in, I just don't want to give the hallway any glimpses of anything, you know, magicky."

Stiles' fight or flight response ratchets down just enough so that he can form words. "Sure, sure," he says, slipping inside quickly, still keeping his eyes on her. "Uh, sorry to interrupt. I can, um, I can do this another time." He hefts his bag slightly, and the witch's smile grows.

"Oh, do you practice, too?" she asks happily, waving at the candles. The flames immediately go out. "I didn't see a men's Wicca group around campus. The women's group was a little, um, light on the magick. Big on the baking, though."

Her tone is curious, but there's something more calculated in her eyes, an almost professional examination. He feels a gentle ghost of her power over his own and gets goosebumps. This girl has real power. The sigils on arms start to thrum slightly in response, keeping his own carefully below the surface.

"Uh, I'm not a baker, in the traditional or super popular stoner sense," Stiles says, gently resting his bag on the ground. "You know, baking ends up with lots of cookies, and cakes, and I'm a horrible stress eater, and it all just goes right to my belly, it's terrible, I've really been trying to avoid those freshman fifteen. And the weed, wow, I hear that it gives you hella munchies. And I'm Stiles," he finishes, lamely. Witches don't shake hands, so he instead inclines his head toward her as she gets to her feet and breaks the circle with a casual wave of her hand.

"Willow," she says, then twists her hands, suddenly awkward. "Um, so, did you meditate in Tibet, too?"

It's not easy to throw Stiles off his conversational game, but this Willow is apparently good at more things than just magick. She hurriedly clarifies, "Um, because, you, you know, are a disciple of the moon? Really into the bad moon rising?"

"I'm not a wolf," Stiles says, then drops his shields slightly to probe gently at her magick. In a rush, he understands, especially when her expression doesn't change. "You're new, aren't you?"

"Well, um, I mean, I'm a freshman like you, 'cause this a freshman dorm, and so unless, um, you're an RA, in which case, totally sorry about the candles! But yeah, I think that we're both, um, new?"

This girl could give him a run for his money in monologuing. But while he can feel the raw well of untapped power in her bones, she's not experienced. He can see wisps of her power rising.

"Whoa," Willow says, her tone suddenly harsh, and Stiles blinks at her. He belatedly realizes his eyes have gone black.

"Sorry, sorry," he apologizes, blinking hard to restore his normal hazel. "I didn't mean to freak you out. The eyes, they're unfortunate."

And a hell of a lot of work, actually. Turns out that, given a proper teacher whose life mission isn’t to be as cryptic as possible, Stiles has quite a knack for the magick arts. But the eyes are something straight out of Supernatural, and Stiles had scared himself so badly the first time he’d caught a glimpse of himself with like that, he’d had to stop training for a few days, reevaluate what exactly he was doing to make sure he wasn’t, like, causing permanent damage to his soul. 

But Willow's gaze quickly clears, and a smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. Eyes bright, she says, "Will you teach me?"


	2. That Old-Time Religion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willow watches Stiles do some magic. She hopes it's not as creepy as it sounds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took liberties with the timeline here. Technically Willow with the red candles in the dorm bathroom is from “Something Blue” and desperately trying to get over Oz, but I put her with Tara because God knows the world can use more Willow/Tara.

Willow should probably be experiencing the kind of terror that vamps feel when they realize the cute little blonde girl strolling through the graveyard is about to dust them six ways to Sunday. Or how the student body felt during her high school graduation. Or, most horrifying, when she eats all of Dawn’s Pop-Tarts and doesn’t replace them and has to deal with Dawn’s murderous stares the morning after.

 

Pants-shittingly terrified, in other words.

 

Because Stiles is the real deal. Jenny Calendar had had a lot of knowledge but an ordinary sort of power, and Giles’ teachings have been deliberately careful (or terrifyingly complicated and high-level if there’s a newly desouled douchebag vampire on the loose). And Tara, well, Willow can’t remember three lines of the spell they did yesterday night, but she knows that Tara was wearing an exceptionally adorable skirt and laughed at each one of Willow’s jokes.

 

It’s the difference between learning French from a book instead of experiencing the culture, she thinks, dazed, as Stiles traces a rune on the bathroom floor. You can learn the building blocks, but you can never be convincing without spending a summer in Nice. And Stiles has definitely done this before, in real life, with some people who overflow with so much magic that glass shatters when they get annoyed, maybe.

 

Her candles are heaped in ruined lumps in the corner, hastily shoved aside. Stiles had taken a moment to trace a shape against the peeling white paint of the bathroom door; it had flared briefly for a moment and then faded completely away. “In case any other mages decide to come start a seance tonight,” he’d joked, pushing his bag over next to her with his foot.

 

In short time, he’d set up about twenty fat, stubby candles (“You should see my real setup at home”) and drawn complicated sigils on the floor in black chalk inside the circle they created. She recognized bits and pieces of those—wind, fire, wolf—but mostly she was watching him. Hopefully not creepily, but most of the time, her magickal research involved a lot of "Jesus Christ, I hope I've interpreted this badly drawn picture in this moldering book correctly; we could all end up as goats." Or, worse, "God, that bad guy is sure throwing down some nicely crafted spells. I hope I live long enough to remember and possibly duplicate some of them." It's a treat to observe someone taking care to make each line of a rune exact, smooth and unhurried.

 

“Okay,” Stiles says briskly, jolting her out of her musings. He rubs chalky fingers on his faded white and blue plaid pajama pants, leaving streaks of black residue near his knees. Willow bites back an unhelpful comment about laundry. “So there are understandably some freaky ass things in this town, what with it being a hellmouth, and I’m pretty fanatical when it comes to safety, so I’ve been refreshing the wards on this dorm once every month on the full moon. More power, works well with the kind of mojo that I have going on.”

 

“Wards,” Willow repeats. Like a loon, she thinks harshly, but Stiles is smiling.

 

“Yep,” he says cheerfully. “They’re pretty basic, but kind of a bitch to master. Like jeans. So common. So easy to get a pair that does nothing for your ass.”

 

Willow thinks, nonsensically, I’ve never seen Tara in jeans before. She immediately hopes Stiles can’t read minds.

 

“So,” Stiles continues easily, “I’m going to go through the chants, and you can tell me what you see, after. You’re welcome to stay inside the circle; just please, don’t move.”

 

“No moving, got it,” Willow says quickly. She will be the stillest girl who ever stilled. Unless there’s an itch. God, she hopes nothing itches.

 

Stiles winks and begins.

  
  
  


“It was so cool,” Willow enthuses for maybe the third time. Judging by Buffy’s face, it might be the seventh or eighth, though. She’d gotten back ten minutes ago to find a shifty-looking Buffy sitting cross-legged on the bed, thumbing through a magazine and casting baleful glances at the telephone on her nightstand.

 

“That’s great, Will,” Buffy says again, for the third time. Or maybe the eighth. She scrunches her nose as Willow finally collapses into bed, on top of the duvet. “But, do you think we should be concerned? Freaky mojo guy, creeping around the bathrooms at 3 a.m. with suspicious magickal paraphernalia, glows gold while he puts magick around the entire building?”

 

“I don’t think so,” Willow says, sitting up and meeting Buffy’s gaze squarely. “I mean, I was sort of skeeving around doing similar things, and I don’t think you put protection wards around people that you don’t like. I didn’t get any weird vibes from him, like bad-weird. It’s just…” She casts around for a comparison. “Look, I know that there were lots of issues with Faith—”

 

Buffy makes a noise and crosses her arms over her cartoon sushi pajama top. “I know that there’s bad juju there,” Willow hurries on. She holds her hands up, placating. “But when you saw her fight, it was beautiful, right? There was no one else you could compare it to except yourself, and I think we’re all still a little traumatized by the, y’know, recording incident.”

 

Both women wince. The less said about the very expensive, very destroyed video camera they had borrowed from Joyce, the better.

 

“I’m just saying, I think this guy would make a great teacher,” Willow says. “He’s doing spells I’ve never even heard of before. It’s like… learning to program in C++ and then having someone introduce you to Java.”

 

“Willow,” Buffy says, pained.

 

“Sorry. Like… going through a bunch of dusty old books for three days when all you need is a Google search and, poof! Gem of Amara in point nine seconds.”

 

“What’s Google,” Buffy deadpans. They grin at each other, and Buffy rolls her eyes.

 

“All right, all right,” she says, pulling her hair free of its bun and scrunching her fingers through her scalp. “I just think it’s worthwhile to maybe run him by Giles first. God knows the man should be able to recognize a teenage dirtbag mage with power issues. He had a mirror in the sixties, after all.”

 

“Sure, I guess,” Willow says, crawling under her covers. “Maybe I’ll show him the magic shop. Or maybe he’s already been in there! Maybe he’ll think that’s not cool enough. Maybe he buys all of his spell materials from a special place in the Pacific Northwest and he’ll think—”

 

Buffy flicks the lights out. “Will,” she says, “if you weren’t so terribly gone on Tara, I’d think you have it bad for this guy.”

 

“What?!” Willow yelps. “I, wha, I don’t have a thing for Tara! I mean, what is a thing? Because she’s nice, and funny, but I think a thing might be taking it a bit too—”

 

“Goodnight, Will.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for all of the positive feedback; it was very kind and made my day. I am planning additional chapters because TW/BtVS crossovers are basically my favorite thing ever.

**Author's Note:**

> Just sort of a fun idea I had. I think Stiles and Willow would be a pretty lethal combination. Not to mention hilarious.


End file.
